Allspice is just one spice, namely the dried fruit of the Pimenta dioica plant. It’s called allspice because the English thought it combined the flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove.

There’s an obvious joke in there about English cooking, so I fact-checked it. While the average 17th-century village shop only offered four spices, well-stocked grocers had up to nineteen.